5 Ways to Keep Readers on Your Blog

If you blog to make more money (which is the end goal of a lot of bloggers), then you know that your traffic is usually proportionate to the amount of money you can make.

The more traffic you get, the more people will see your products, affiliate links, ads, etc. That means more sales and/or clicks, which means more money in your pocket!

But building consistent traffic is hard, especially if you’re just getting started! So I thought I’d gather my best tips to help you keep your readers on your blog, or at least make sure they come back one in a while!

1. Only publish valuable content

If this isn’t something you’re doing already, I don’t know why you blog. You need to know your audience and know what’s valuable to them and write about that. It’s going to be really hard to monetize a blog that’s all over the place and only talking about you.

You need to pick a niche/topic you love, and write useful posts about that! Try writing lists and tutorials! Those are two kinds of blog posts that always do well 😉

2. Add a “Related Posts” section at the bottom of each post

So the title of your blog post was interesting enough that someone actually clicked through. They read your post and found it interesting. What then? They could simply close the tab and move on with their life, or they could see another post that sounds interesting and go read that one too!

Most people won’t use it, but some totally will and they’ll become some of your biggest fans! After reading every post on your blog, they’ll favorite it and come back once in a while because they just love everything you write about.

If you have a WordPress website, you can use a plugin like Jetpack or YARPP to add a “Related Posts” section to your website!

3. Make it easy to search blog posts by categories

This is super important, especially if you have a lot of blog posts already! So if you have a food blog, it’d be great if visitors could filter posts by ingredients or seasons. If you have a DIY blog, why not have it broken down by holidays, or which room it’s for.

If you have a business blog, make it easy for someone to find all of your social media related posts, etc.

That way, if someone lands on your blog wanting to learn about something in particular, they can use that filtering system to read a ton of blog posts related to what they are interested in!

4. Have a search box somewhere on your website

If you think a search box is useless, think again! I was on a blog recently because I remembered reading an interesting post by that person, but she didn’t have a search box on her website… So what did I do? I just left and moved on. If you make it hard for me to find the info I want, I’ll just leave! And I won’t be the only one…

A good place to add a search box is either in your header, in your footer or your sidebar. And you don’t really need more than one!

And if you’ve tried your search box before and find that it sucks, add the Relevanssi plugin to your website and experience its magic! It’s a much better search engine than the standard WordPress one, so you can thank me later 😄

5. Get visitors on your mailing list

The secret to repeat visitors is definitely in mailing lists! Whether you share all of your blog posts to your mailing list or you do a weekly recap, keeping in touch with those who have decided to opt-in is the best way to get them interested in what you’re writing and building a relationship with them.

They’ll not only be more likely to read your new blog posts, they’ll also be a lot more likely to buy from you too!

Which posts are the most read? How long do people stay on those specific posts? How many pages does the average user visit before leaving your site? Take a deeper look into your statistics to get a good idea of what’s happening already, and start tweaking! Keep an eye out for better analytics, but don’t get too worried about it either 😊 Stuff like that takes time!

Keep Reading!

Virginie

Virginie is the founder of CityGirl's Design, a web design company that helps thriving entrepreneurs grow their business by providing them with a website that converts hesitant clients and attracts new ones. If she’s not behind her computer, you can find her hanging out on the beach, either reading a good book or transforming into a mermaid!Learn More >

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